When all these nightmares become real
by ncis-lady
Summary: "But the moment she recognises the dwarf in front of her she realises that her nightmares have been nothing compared to this. For it's not Fíli at the door. Not Kíli. Not Thorin. It's Balin." Dís after Bo5A. Spoilers for the ending of The Hobbit!


I never planned to write this, but somehow yesterday I got lost in thoughts about how Dís would hear about the fate of her sons and brother. How would I feel if I lost everything? I know what it's like to lose a mother, but losing a sibling or child… God, my heart is aching for Dís.

Please read the A/N at the end.

Reviews are very much appreciated!

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**When all these nightmares become real**

_Perhaps we are given a mother that we might take into death the memory of a lullaby._ (Robert Brault)

She knows her heart has been right all along. Nightmares of battle cries and blood-soaked fields have been haunting her days. Something terrible has happened.

Dís walks to the door when she hears the knock, and each step she takes feels like a lifetime. Every step a memory flooding her mind, a memory of a time long past, and she opens the door and all she needs to know is –

'Who?'

But the moment she recognises the dwarf in front of her she realises that her nightmares have been nothing compared to this. For it's not Fíli at the door. Not Kíli. Not Thorin.

It's Balin.

She hears him speak, 'I'm sorry', as she backs away, stumbles on her way back into the room, if she can only close the door and pretend it has never opened, then maybe she will wake up from this nightmare and be able to breathe again.

But Balin is already following her, she can see him limp a little, his white beard tousled and singed as he holds her by the wrist.

It's that touch that brings her clarity.

'I'm so sorry, Dís,' he repeats quietly, and she can see his eyes shine with unshed tears.

Sorry. It's barely above a whisper as he speaks, but the small word is the only thing that matters to her, a word too big to handle and yet too small to fill the hole that it's tearing into her heart.

Can you hear a heart breaking?

Dís hardly notices how the older dwarf steers her towards a chair; she sits down automatically, staring at him and at nothing at all. It's not possible. It cannot be. Her mind is blank as her shoulders start to shake and her chest heaves with repressed sobs.

'Say it isn't true,' she whispers, desperately clinging to Balin's worn-out cloak. 'Please, Balin… not my boys. Not them.'

But Balin doesn't answer, and she feels herself slip off the edge when tears run down her face, everything around her becoming blurred before her eyes as her sobs echo in her ears.

Her boys. Her children.

Her Fíli. Her golden-haired cub, the future prince, proud and strong and protective of his family.

Her Kíli. Her baby who looks so much like the brother she's lost too early, always so full of energy and eager to conquer the world.

Her children are gone.

Balin is murmuring words she barely hears, some fragments she comprehends, but they mean nothing in this moment of endless falling.

'They died to protect your brother. They fought valiantly. You can be proud of your sons.'

Proud.

Slowly Dís looks up, tears still running hot on her face, and for a moment all she wants is to hit him. But instead she only looks him in the eye, her voice raspy as she speaks.

'I am their mother. They don't need to be dead for me to be proud of them.'

She has said it. Dead. The word lingers in the dim-lit room, filling it until there is no air left to breathe. And does it matter? She has lost everything, there is nothing that can still be taken from her, and losing breath is irrelevant compared to the loss that makes her ache in a way she has never hurt before.

'How could it come to this?' she whispers, trying in vain to make sense of it all, trying to understand when she knows that there is no reason in the world good enough to ever understand. 'They should never have come on the quest. They weren't supposed to be there. I begged Kíli to stay, but he wouldn't listen, he wouldn't leave his brother he said, and now he's dead, Balin, they're both _dead_, but they promised they'd come back, how could they not come back?'

Her voice becomes louder as she shakes the older dwarf, she screams at him and yet he stands still, rigid and calm but for the tears in his blue eyes.

'Thorin should never have taken them, they were too young, I told him they were too young! But he didn't listen, why didn't he listen just this once? Why didn't he look after them?'

She knows it's not fair, she mustn't blame him, it's not his fault, but she needs to blame _someone_ and Thorin's dead so what does it matter.

Oh, Thorin. Her brother is dead.

Faintly she feels Balin stroke her back, his words of comfort don't reach her when her world falls to pieces.

'He did look after them,' she hears him say, 'as best as he could. You have to believe me, Dís.' He's almost pleading, begging her to understand, but she doesn't want to believe it. She doesn't want to hear any of it.

'He failed them,' she replies, with a kind of bitterness in her voice that she has never heard from herself before. 'He let them die all alone.'

Again the sobs emerging in her chest take her breath away. She gasps for air, she's suffocating, and for a brief moment she thinks that she doesn't even care.

Can you die of a broken heart?

'Dís.' She hasn't listened to Balin, and he shakes her gently from her state of shock. His eyes lock onto hers, urging her to let him speak. 'They were together. I found them, Dís, it was me who first saw them.' His voice is pained, and she can see the memories like shadows in his eyes as they turn dark for a moment. 'I know what I say cannot ease your pain. But, Dís… they had each other. They weren't alone.'

Seconds of silence pass between them, and she searches in his eyes for a sign that he is lying, but she sees none. All she sees is her life-time friend, the one who cradled her when Frerin died and her little heart was broken for the first time, the one who comforted her when she lost her love on that cold winter day, the one who took her sons for strolls in the mountains and taught them how to build animal traps and find shelter in the forest when the weather changed.

'Tell me what happened,' she asks him, and Balin begins to talk about forests and spiders and wild rivers, about orcs and elves and men, dragons and gold and mountains. He holds her hand and she listens as the world around her falls away.

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_Tell me how I'm supposed to feel_

_When all these nightmares become real_

_Cause I don't know_

(Rise Against, "Roadside")

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A/N:

I don't know how old Dís was when Frerin died, but I imagine her to be a little girl at the time. It's also never exactly mentioned how and when her husband died. I thought at first that he died in battle, fighting side by side with Thorin, but that doesn't match Fíli's and Kíli's dates of birth. And since I refuse to believe that dwarves are born out of stone or the earth, my conclusion is that their father died when Kíli had just been born. That way Fíli might even remember him a little (which doesn't matter for this story, obviously, but might come up in a future story).


End file.
